case studies

Criterion Collection presents ‘Sex, Lies and Video Tape’

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) delivers a multilayered character examination on the complications of the narcissistic end of the Reagan era 1980s and the seeds of the personal video age we are living through today wherein everyone is armed with their own video devices. This new digital transfer was created completely in 4K on a DFT Scanity film scanner from the original 35mm camera negatives.

Israel Film Archive

This rare view of traditional dances of Jews from the Atlas Mountains, was originated on a reversal 16mm film reel and then scanned at IFA's digitisation lab using Scanity as part of IFA's mass digitisation, digital preservation and access project to safeguard our shared treasures for years to come.

All England and Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club: 35mm film scanned in HD and fully restored using DFT Scanity at ReStore Studios

“R3store Studios is in the business of restoring old film to the finest standards and the DFT Scanity with its sprocketless and smooth continuous motion transport combined with the rolling gate mechanism and high depth-of-field gives us ultimate quality from very challenging film elements in resolutions up to 4K”

Gerry Gedge – R3store Studios

30 hours of 'lost' Wimbledon footage restored

Marking the 150th anniversary of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), R3Store Studios have been working on the restoration of a “huge amount” of its archive.

Around 30 hours of content, dating from the 1920s to the 1980s is being restored, including official films and news reels. The content features both match action and old interviews with players such as Connolly and Perry. The project has uncovered a host of 'lost' footage and the original negatives of many classic Wimbledon moments.

R3store Studios, is scanning the film and is also responsible for the automated restoration and manual frame-by-frame repairing of images. Jo Griffin, COO of R3store Studios said: “Working from the original negs has been wonderful and I think everyone who views this content will be amazed at just how fantastic it now looks.”

Criterion Collection presents ‘Moonrise’

Moonrise (1948) is part southern gothic tale, melodrama, and film noir, with it’s opening sequence ‘… a master class in black-and-white photography’. This new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on a DFT Scanity film scanner from the 35mm nitrate original camera negative.

National Archives use Spirit scanner in new Memphis Belle documentary

National Archives have recently partnered with Vulcan Productions and Creative Differences to digitally preserve the outtakes of William Wyler's Memphis Belle and original footage from Berlin in 1945, for a new feature length documentary, ‘The Cold Blue’. The original Kodachrome was scanned by NARA in 4K resolution using a dft Spirit film scanner. While the colour of the originals remains beautiful, the film has shrunk over time, requiring careful handling and slow scanning speeds to avoid damage. In total, it took 80 hours to scan the reels and generated over 80 TB worth of data.

The Cold Blue uses the original footage and accounts of veterans to illustrate the complexity of the missions, highlight the camaraderie of the crew, show appreciation for the ground crews, and to explore their thoughts on the events as they occurred, and looking back seventy-five years later.

Criterion Collection remaster 'Sid & Nancy'

Supervised and approved by director of photography Roger Deakins, this 6-bit 4K digital transfer was created on a DFT Scanity film scanner from the original 35mm camera negative at Deluxe in Culver City, California.

"Sid & Nancy looks excellent in this high-definition transfer, showing that Criterion still cares greatly about one of its earliest releases. With grain intact, details are strong, colors are nice and the overall image is a significant improvement over the initial DVD release."

Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish given the 'Scanity' treatment

Recently released by the Criterion Collection, this movie has been given a new 4K scan and provides a remastered stereo audio track and a 5.1 remix. Supervised by director of photography Stephen H. Burum and approved by director Francis Ford Coppola, this new 16-bit 4K digital transfer was created on a DFT Scanity film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative.

R3Store Studios work with AP Archive to restore Charles and Diana footage

The Associated Press has restored original and unique footage from the Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in July 1981 and is releasing it in 4K on YouTube. The footage comes from the British Movietone archive, which was acquired by the AP in 2016. British Movietone was the only company to film the wedding on high quality 35mm film, whereas others filmed it on standard definition video tape. As a result, this 25 minute British Movietone documentary represents the highest resolution of footage of the wedding known to exist. AP retrieved the original film negatives to complete an intricate transfer of the material to 4K.

Alwyn Lindsey of the Associated Press: “The images from Charles and Diana’s wedding are familiar to millions but the fact the British Movietone filmed the wedding on 35mm film has allowed AP to make the video available for the public to enjoy at a quality never seen before. The restored 4K film is simply stunning and a world away from the 1980s videotape versions that we’re familiar with.”

A Hard Day’s Night follows the fab four through a fictionalized ‘typical day’ of running from hoards of crazed fans, traveling by train, hanging out in their hotel room, meeting the press, cracking wise, filming a live TV show and, finally, performing for a capacity crowd of those same of hysterical fans who simply will not stop screaming.

Using the latest in digital restoration technology, the Criterion Collection was able to restore the film from the 35 mm original camera negative, which, though incomplete, was in excellent condition. The missing material was taken from two original interpositives. The image was scanned in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner to retain the character of the film’s original printing stock without any generational loss, and the raw data was carefully treated using a variety of digital tools to remove dirt, scratches, flicker and other damage.

DFT’s new WetGate technology is designed specifically for DFT’s Scanity HDR model providing a real-time organic solution for the ingest and management of difficult to solve historical film transfer issues – such as dust and scratch removal – surpassing prior transfer standards. The WetGate is ideal for archive owners who need a scanner that’s able to handle a range of problematic and historically-aged film issues.

WetGate Process

Watch the WetGate process demo video

Film Digitization - LAC's perspective two years in

LAC selected a film scanning solu-tion built around the DFT Scanity film scanner and complemented by a colour correction suite featuring BlackMagic’s Resolve software. Scani-ty met all our specifications for image resolution, safe film handling, scan-ning speed and audio capture support for both optical and magnetic sound-tracks.

Restoration of King of Jazz uses Scanity

1930’s two-colour classic ‘King of Jazz’ has been recently restored. This has been a lengthy and complex project, involving numerous parties. As part of the process, a surviving nitrate print from 1930 with a length of 83 minutes was found, and scanned at 4K by Prasad Corp. on a Scanity, because the print’s 1.8% shrinkage demanded sprocketless scanning.

Denzel Washington's intimate adaptation of Fences uses dft’s Scanity

Nearly 30 years after its Broadway premiere, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences is the first August Wilson play to make it to the big screen. According to cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen, Fences is a passion project for Washington, who also signed on to direct the movie. Footage was processed at Fotokem in Burbank, Calif, and the negative was scanned at 4K and oversampled down to 2K on a DFT Scanity film scanner.

Cinelicious uses Scanity in restoration of 'Private Property'

Private Property was scanned in 4K resolution on the Scanity film scanner at Cinelicious from the earliest known existing element, a 35mm dupe negtive recently discovered and preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. The resulting data was then digitally restored frame-by-frame using a variety of tools to remove dirt, scratches, flicker and other damage. While the full aperture elements were completely restored, the film is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.66:1.

Cinelicious uses Scanity HDR for National Parks Adventure

Greg MacGillivray has been working in the film world for 40 years. His films demand the finest image quality possible and he gets that with our technicians and Scanity HDR scanner. We proudly provided scanning services for his films Humpback Whales and National Parks Adventure.

Film maker Bill Morrison uses Scanity in film restoration project

For over 30 years, the filmmaker Bill Morrison has been resurrecting forgotten footage and finding its place within often equally forgotten historical and cultural contexts.

WetGate scanning and digitisation of ‘Mama, ich lebe’

Konrad Wolf’s 1977 film ‘Mama, ich lebe’, has been digitised for the DEFA Foundation at Omnimago. The project is the first to use dft’s new WetGate technology, in conjunction with dft’s Scanity 4K scanner.

Latest amazing WetGate comparison images from Scanity HDR at Omnimago

Dft’s Scanity used during restoration of ‘Memory of Justice’

‘The Memory of Justice’, created in 1976 by Marcel Ophüls, examines three of the defining tragedies of the Western world in the second half of the 20th century, from the Nuremberg trials through the French-Algerian war to Vietnam, building from a vast range of interviews, from Telford Taylor (Counsel for the Prosecution at Nuremberg, later a harsh critic of US’s escalating involvement in Vietnam) to Nazi architect Albert Speer to Daniel Ellsberg and Joan Baez.

Nice Shoes work on ‘Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell’

A notable recent project for renowned color and finishing studio Nice Shoes was director Martin Bell’s upcoming documentary Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell, which is a follow-up to Bell’s 1984 film Streetwise. Utilizing the Scanity, 16mm footage from Streetwise was scanned in at 4K, to be cut into the new film as well as to be archived at a higher resolution.

“With the Scanity, we were able to aid Martin in upgrading the material from Streetwise in the early 80s so that it would match well with the footage captured for Tiny which he’s shot over the past few years. It's great for us to offer this to documentary filmmakers like him, who are often working with beautiful archival footage," said Nice Shoes colorist/partner Chris Ryan.

Silent 1908 film ‘Les Lunatiques’ restored by National Library of Norway

This black and white, hand coloured silent comedy has been restored by the National Library of Norway

Digimage restore French masterpiece

In 2015 Digimage restored in 4K the French masterpiece “Fanny” (1932) by Marc Allegret. Unfortunately, the film negative doesn’t exist anymore and Digimage only had the nitrate fine grain dupe positive at their disposal. Thanks to the Scanity, Digimage reached a result that met their expectations.

The Packard Humanities Institute has recently completed its film study and conservation centre in Santa Clarita, which will also be the new home of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The centre has a new DFT Scanity, which is currently being used to scan newsreels. The Los Angeles Times had an interesting story describing this new centre.

comparison video of dft's WetGate technology for its latest scanity hdr film scanner

DFT’s new WetGate technology is designed specifically for DFT’s Scanity HDR model providing a real-time organic solution for the ingest and management of difficult to solve historical film transfer issues – such as dust and scratch removal – surpassing prior transfer standards. The WetGate is ideal for archive owners who need a scanner that’s able to handle a range of problematic and historically-aged film issues.

Scanity used in Blu-Ray restoration of “IKIRU”

IKIRU (translated as "To Live"), a 1952 Japanese film directed and co-written by Akira Kurosawa, describes the struggles of a middle-aged Tokyo bureaucrat and his quest for meaning after discovering he has terminal cancer. The film appeared in Empire Magazine's greatest 500 films of all time. Recently remastered and released as on Blu-Ray disc, this review states that “This new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from a 35 mm fine-grain master positive, the best remaining film element of IKIRU, whose original negative no longer exists.”

Preserving 'The Dismissal' footage

The 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, also known simply as "the Dismissal", has been described as the greatest political and constitutional crisis in Australian history. It culminated on 11 November 1975 with the dismissal from office of the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam. Much of the footage taken of the events mysteriously disappeared. The original footage that still remains was donated to NFSA to be digitally preserved. Using Scanity, the footage has been captured and presented in its original quality to ensure its safety for viewing by future generations.

1980's classic thriller 'Dressed to Kill' remastered using Scanity

Thriller 'Dressed to Kill' has recently been remastered and released. The release was supervised by Brian De Palma and is a new digital transfer created in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from the 35 mm original camera negative as well as a 35 mm interpositive for additional footage for the unrated cut.

Reviews state that "... the original release had major issues with stretching and color grading, which now appear to be corrected. Detail levels are fantastic throughout while the natural film grain only add to the appeal. Colours are finely balanced while never seemingly pumped up or oversaturated. There were no major instances of dust marks, scratches or other ailments making for the best this movie has ever looked, including the MGM/Fox Blu-ray release."

Scanity used in restoration of The Criterion Collection’s ‘The Black Stallion’

1979 classic children’s film ‘The Black Stallion’ has been recently remastered and re-released as a Blu-ray disc. The new digital transfer was created in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner from the 35 mm original camera negative, which was then restored in 2K resolution.

See how BBC Studios and Post Production use dft's Scanity

Cinelicious on Sundance: Boyhood and Beyond

Cinelicious (www.cinelicious.tv), with locations in Hollywood and Santa Monica, is a creative studio that offers a host of post services that includes HD/2K/4K color grading for commercials, ...

Historic Lumière film comes to life with Scanity

Created by the Lumière brothers over 100 years ago, and discovered by La Musée Suisse de l’Appareil Photographique de Vevey, this short, 20 second film depicts a French family outing.

Video and Film Solutions use a wetgate system to assassinate scratches

Lost 1927 Disney Christmas film found in Norway

The film, an almost complete version of Empty Socks, was discovered during an inventory at the library’s facility in Mo i Rana, near the Arctic circle

BBC Studios and Post Production’s specialist Digital Media Services team has completed full restoration work on the classic British murder mystery series Miss Marple, bringing the picture quality up to date for 21st century audiences.

Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive restores record of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’

It's just over a year since the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) took delivery of the first Scanity in Australia. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we look back on the first 12 months of operation. ...

BBC Studios and Post Production Digital Media Services uses dft’s Scanity to put The Jewel in the Crown for ITV Studios Global Entertainment

Thirty years after it was first broadcast on British television, BBC Studios and Post Production’s award-winning Digital Media Services team has digitally restored and remastered over 30 hours of film ...